History
Although local radio had been broadcast from Plymouth as station 2PY between 1924 and 1934, the first regional television programme was not broadcast until 20 April 1961, just nine days before the rival ITV service from Westward Television began broadcasting. At first a ten-minute bulletin called News from the South West was read by Tom Salmon, but in under a year it had doubled in length and had been renamed as South West at Six, hosted by Sheila Tracy. The name Spotlight was adopted on 30 September 1963.
Those early radio broadcasts had been made from the Athenaeum Chambers in Athenaeum Lane in Plymouth (ironically, next to what would become Westward and TSW's headquarters), but just before the Second World War the BBC started looking for alternative premises. A Victorian villa named Ingledene in Seymour Road was bought from the Douglass family and this building has, as of 2012, remained the BBC's headquarters in the South West. It has been considerably extended over the years, including the addition of a new and larger television studio in 1974 in preparation for the conversion of Spotlight to colour the following year. A replacement purpose-built broadcasting centre on the opposite side of Sutton Harbour from the Barbican has been under construction since 2008 and was due to open in mid-2011, though it has since stalled due to the effect of the recession on the construction industry and a change in the original plans. In late 2012, the owner of the harbour expressed fears the move may never happen and admitted other parties had expressed an interest in moving to the site earmarked for the BBC. In 2013, the BBC confirmed it would not be moving to Sutton Harbour, but instead be refurbishing its existing Plymouth headquarters.
A lighthouse motif had been in use within the programme's title sequences for many years until May 2000, when Spotlight adopted the generic BBC regional news design. The motif returned in May 2006, and the use of a lighthouse in the titles remained with the latest BBC News relaunch in 2008.
Read more about this topic: Spotlight (BBC News)
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